Open and Affordable Textbook Initiative @ LMU

The Problem with Textbooks:

• Runaway textbook costs on college campuses have become a major impediment to student success
• Textbook costs have outpaced inflation by 300% over the last 30 years
• LMU students spend an average of over $938 per year on textbooks (1)
• 65% of students have forgone purchasing or renting college textbooks because of cost, according to a 2021 PIRG survey of 4000 students nationwide (2)

The Open & Affordable Textbook Initiative (OATI) is designed to help LMU faculty identify and adopt high-quality, accessible, and low or no-cost course materials for our LMU students using OER and library resources.

This guide contains information about Open Educational Resources, LMU Library resources suitable for course adoption, and information to help with discovery, evaluation, and use of alternative course materials. It is intended as a starting point, and we encourage faculty interested in the initiative (or those already doing this work!) to get in touch with your librarian liaison. 

Not all online materials are free, and not all free materials are openly licensed. This table summarizes the most common options you'll encounter & what you and your students can do with them.

Accessible version here.

This resource for the LMU Open & Affordable Textbook Initiative, created by Jamie Hazlitt and Nataly Blas, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This guide was developed in part by adapting portions of the following open resources:

• Textbook Affordability and Open Educational Resources at NOVA
• Affordable Course Materials Initiative at UCLA
• Getting Started with OER (University of Hartford)
• Open Educational Resources (University of Houston)
• Pressbooks (UW Libraries)